“He has expressed, in no uncertain terms, his close personal interest in this war.”
“He can very well maintain a close personal interest in it from forty billion light years away,” said the Saint of Joy, who had just strongly implied the opposite. Her name was sounding increasingly ironic to you. “I do not blush to remove the Emperor from his enemies. I do not blush ensuring the God of the Nine Houses is not molested by those who hate him.”
“I do not recognise,” said Sarpedon, “any such frailty in the God who became man, nor the man who became God, nor the Necrolord Prime who may resurrect a galaxy with a gesture.”
The Lyctor’s voice rose further: “The risen star Dominicus gives light and life to the Nine Houses, and yet I don’t think we should crash anything into it!! You just wore out my last nerve, Sarpedon, and I still remember when there were fewer pips on your shirt, so I would ask that you not mistake a Lyctor for someone you can—”
There was a shout from the other side of the fourteenth cargo hold. It was the voice of the God who became man, and the man who became God. He approached the ramp at a swift clip, making a beeline for the boiling-mad Saint of Joy. Beside you, Ianthe smacked her lips as though in anticipation of a good meal; a sort of mlem, mlem, mlem.
But the Emperor wrapped his arms around his Lyctor as though she were a precious and runaway child; he pressed her to him, drawing down the hood and tousling that overripe rose-tinted hair, heedless of the curtseying, bowing Cohort officers in the wake of his passage. She froze as though dipped in liquid nitrogen. He said something that you couldn’t catch, and then: “Thank you for your work here. You’ve done well.”
The Saint of Joy was ramrod straight and still, as though her feet had been fixed to the docking-bay floor with big steel pins. The Emperor of the Nine Houses turned from her to the admiral, who was half into his own genuflection, pressing a hand to his shoulder and immediately embarking on a low conversation you could only catch in bits: “—no hurry going around the belt. If the wind off Dominicus gives you problems, take the same route back … Subluminary speed’s fine. After you do your deliveries, stelitic travel will get you out of the supercluster and back to the second arm of the fleet, but you’re going to have to go a lot slower than you have the past two weeks…”
“Then you do intend to leave us, Lord,” said Sarpedon. He had moved so that now you could see him properly; your new hood, unlike good Ninth House furze, was transparent enough to let you see quite clearly, albeit through a stippled violence of rainbow light. You beheld a man of middling age in a sober Cohort uniform, perennial white jacket and scarlet neckerchief. The two pips on his collar were ringed around with mother-of-pearl. If you had not heard his rank, you would not have known what they signified. Necromantic vapour rose off him in roiling waves like sweat, unused and impotent in the vacuum of deep space. “I confess that I had not prepared for it.”
“I hate to, Admiral,” said God. “The Erebos has been my home.”
The admiral said, a little stiffly: “We are unworthy of such love.”
“I am unworthy of this pitiful goodbye,” said the King Undying. “What I planned on telling you, I will tell you now, swifter and more gracelessly. Don’t get caught up in the drama of the Cohort command. I know exactly who is behind this terrible blow, and they were fools to show their hand. They have revealed themselves to be as coarse and juvenile and foolish as the act they have just committed. But our retaliation should not be swift. Let them understand the inevitability of the Nine Houses.”
“As inexorable as death,” said the admiral.
“And as kind,” said the Emperor. “You have shown your loyalty to me, Sarpedon, and I have never questioned you. You made the Erebos my respite. But—as I imagine you have just been told—” (Did the Saint of Joy writhe at that, or were you imagining it?) “—my station is my seat, and the Erebos is needed elsewhere.”
“But to go unaccompanied, Lord—with the stele, a transport ship could be out as far as the Hadals in two years.”
“Eighteen thousand good soldiers,” the Emperor said gently.